Economic Crisis 2008 and 2009

The Economic Crisis of 2008 is believed to have occurred because of global inflation, increased unemployment, high oil and food prices, a declining dollar value, a horrible housing market, and a subprime mortgage crisis. Although economic crisis is happening all over the world, this article will consist of tips on how to research the United States Economic Crisis of 2008.

LexisNexis Statistical DataSets

You can be sure that economists and historians will be studying the causes of the current crisis in US financial markets for many years to come. To help meet this research need, LexisNexis has made available to academic library markets a large dataset with over 3.5 billion data points on mortgage loan applications and outcomes from 2004 to 2007.

The data was collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) of 1975, which requires mortgage brokers to report loan applications that they processed or purchased during each calendar year. Beginning in 2004, lenders also had to report on loans they originated that exceeded the prevailing rates by 3% or more, i.e. subprime and near-prime loans.

A little-known Federal agency, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, maintains the HMDA data but distributes it in preformatted summary tables not easily accessed by the public.

LexisNexis has made all of this data available to subscribers of LexisNexis Statistical Datasets, enabling researchers to identify lenders and geographic areas with a disproportionate share of high-risk mortgage loans.

Because of the rich array of variables in the HMDA dataset, the data has other uses. Students can analyze mortgage applications and outcomes by the demographic characteristics of borrowers, loan purpose and type, housing unit type, loan amount, reason for denial, geographic area (down to the census tract!), and responsible Federal agency.

Interestingly enough, the HMDA data was the subject of a July 2007 hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on discriminatory lending practices. The hearing, which you can find in LN Congressional, is titled Rooting Out Discrimination in Mortgage Lending: Using HMDA as a Tool for Fair Lending Enforcement.

For a demonstration of HMDA data on LexisNexis Statistical DataSets, click on the link below. The person conducting the demo is Richard Landry, the developer of Statistical DataSets.

HMDA DataSet Demonstration